Europe Says a Third of Karzai Votes Are Suspect

KABUL, Afghanistan — European Union monitors said Wednesday that about one-third of the votes cast for President Hamid Karzai in the Aug. 20 election were suspicious and should be examined for fraud.

Their assertion was a more serious indictment of the election’s already marred integrity than those of other foreign monitors and only deepened the political crisis here. President Karzai’s campaign office angrily dismissed the European Union assertion, which came as the latest preliminary tally of votes showed he had won — if the suspect ballots are included.

Mr. Karzai, who is vying for a second five-year term, won 54.6 percent of the vote, enough to avoid a runoff election, according to the tally released by the country’s national election commission. His closest challenger, the former Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah, won 27.8 percent.

But the election was tainted by blatant evidence of ballot-box stuffing and other frauds, and the country’s United Nations-backed Electoral Complaints Commission has ordered recounts and forensic examinations of ballot boxes in 10 percent of polling places. That would involve at least 15 percent, and possibly a far higher proportion, of reported votes. The complaints commission, led by a Canadian, is the ultimate arbiter of election results.

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Campaign posters remained plastered on a wall in Kabul on Wednesday, as an election monitor said 1.1 million votes for President Karzai were suspicious.Credit
Ahmad Masood/Reuters

Some Western officials say that if all fraudulent ballots were discarded, Mr. Karzai’s tally would drop below 50 percent, forcing him into a runoff against Mr. Abdullah. But it is unclear how many ballots might be ruled invalid in the recount, and even if Mr. Karzai were ultimately forced into a runoff, the harsh winter weather might prevent it from being held until April.

The fraud, and the risk that it could leave the country with a government widely seen by Afghans and the international community as illegitimate, has left Afghanistan’s Western backers in a growing quandary: whether to be more aggressive in pressuring Mr. Karzai’s government and his loyalists at the election commission to work harder to prevent fraud, or to be more conciliatory and accept his re-election as a fait accompli.

There are growing fears among United States and European officials that the fraud and a drawn-out recount or runoff risks derailing American and NATO efforts to stabilize the country by hurting the Afghan government’s already low credibility among its people and weakening support for troop increases in Western countries where polls show growing disillusionment with the war.

Its sinking popularity follows the deadliest stretch for United States and NATO forces of the conflict. Three American soldiers were killed Tuesday in southern Afghanistan by a roadside bomb, the United States military said. At least 344 Western military fatalities have been recorded so far this year, a 17 percent increase over last year’s entire death toll, according to icasualties.org, which tracks fatalities.

Now, the evidence of widespread electoral fraud has further dimmed support for the war.

In a news conference just hours before the pre-audited results were released, the European Union monitors said they believed that the tally included 1.5 million suspicious ballots, or more than one of every four votes cast.

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Election posters for the incumbent, President Hamid Karzai, on a street in Kabul, Afghanistan, on Wednesday.Credit
Manish Swarup/Associated Press

Dimitra Ioannou, one of the union’s election monitors, said 1.1 million suspicious votes belonged to Mr. Karzai and 300,000 to Mr. Abdullah. European officials emphasized that those numbers did not necessarily represent fraudulent votes, but votes that needed to be investigated.

In response, Mr. Karzai’s campaign lashed out against the announcement as “partial and irresponsible,” setting the Afghan leader against representatives of countries his government depends on for military and financial support against a raging insurgency that controls much of the countryside. A spokesman for Mr. Karzai’s presidential office declined to comment on the campaign office’s statement.

But Mr. Abdullah’s campaign, which has maintained that more than one million votes are fraudulent, strongly backed the monitors’ announcement.

“Their job is to observe the election process and announce what they have seen,” said Fazal Sancharaki, a spokesman for Mr. Abdullah. “This is their authority and responsibility.”

According to the election commission, turnout was 38.17 percent, and about three of five voters were men.

Mr. Karzai received 3,093,256 votes; Mr. Abdullah 1,571,581 votes; and the third-place finisher, Ramazan Bashardost, 520,627 votes. The total number of valid votes so far is 5,662,758, the commission said.

Abdul Waheed Wafa contributed reporting.

A version of this article appears in print on , on page A6 of the New York edition with the headline: Europeans Say One-Third of Votes for Afghan Leader Are Suspect. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe